Actual fusion power stations are still probably 40 years away, though. ITER is still a test facility and it's far too expensive to use as a power station even if it was capable of sustained fusion at a high enough efficiency (which it won't be).

But it is impressive and promising that multiple national governments have been co-operating on the project for 40 years and plan to continue it for 40 more.

It's fully functional, several generations on from the first ones and has been running for 30 years.

The main problem is still the same, though - creating the conditions in which fusion can occur requires more energy than can be obtained from the fusion. JET holds the record, but it's nowhere near sustainable breakeven point. It's a research facility. It got to about 65% for a fraction of a second (q=~0.65). You need about q=10 sustained indefinitely for a viable power station.

But they've learned a lot from JET and are currently building ITER, a far bigger facility that's the next step...and that should be able to reach q=10 for brief periods.

You've seen the photo of JET in this list. Here's a photo of the foundation for the same structure in ITER, taken from much further away:

Monday, September 30, 2013 6:56:07 PM747: Our local coal port has a new stacker/reclaimer which is much the same thing, and it is eNORmous! I built a model of the coal operations for the company, and nobody could believe how huge the new one is next to the old machine, which is huge and only half its size!

Monday, September 30, 2013 6:05:43 PMI never saw that open pit miner thing before.. that thing looks massive. I wouldn't mind having my own personal boring machine, i'd make some pretty cool underground highways. But it would be even better if we could get something like minecraft, with a few chops a 1m cube is gone from the ground, and in your pocket, a mixture of star trek and i dream of Genie (her bottle)